Ah, October! My favorite month, and not just because I have a birthday in October. We pretty much get our town back from the seasonal invaders, and things quiet down. Even the leaf peepers have bailed. The pace slows; it’s obvious on the roads now. Local businesses close or curtail operations to meet a much smaller demand. Then, for those folks, it’s time to calculate whether their summer revenue was enough to carry them to Memorial Day. For most, it wasn’t, and a paying gig has to be found for the next three seasons.
I might have mentioned that I had a birthday in October, but by now you know this column is never just about me. Except when it is.
Speaking of my birthday, the first one I clearly remember is my 10th. My father had a Piper Tri-Pacer while he was stationed in Pennsylvania, which he used for frequent flights to Virginia to visit his parents. He called it his “flying milk stool.” That the fuselage and wing surfaces were fabric stretched over invisible metal-tube frames like a pup tent inspired zero confidence in this 10-year-old. I imagined that an accidental slice or tear in its fabric covering could give that noisy contraption all the aerodynamics of a set of monkey bars. Heck, Orville Wright, a high school dropout who helped conceive this machine, had died only seven years earlier. Heart attack. The dang thing probably scared him to death, too.
Our family had recently returned stateside after two years in Japan, and I had few friends. Sort of like now. It was decided that there would be a birthday celebration for me with cake and ice cream. The neighborhood kids were invited, along with a few others from families of my parents’ friends, and the invitation included the promise of a ride in my father’s plane. All the invited guests actually showed up to ask what a pilot does when he has to pee while in a flying pup tent a mile high in the air.
With a limit of three passengers plus the pilot in the aircraft, it was necessary to take the kids up in shifts. My mother warned Dad not to show the boys how he could use the odd-looking hose device that was attached to the floor of the plane in front of the pilot’s seat. With an open drain through the underside of the aircraft, it was to relieve himself in flight. Morning coffee can initiate that need, but I’m pretty sure he complied with Mom’s demand. One embarrassed my mother only upon the certain penalty of horrific retaliation.
During the short flights, Dad would buzz each of his passengers’ houses and return to the field for the next load. It was a great day for me and my new friends — and for the people waving on the ground as Dad flew over them without once using that hose thing. I’m pretty sure such midair activity would not have gone unnoticed by his passengers, a bunch of excited, prepubescent young men high on birthday cake, ice cream and curiosity.
It was also the day I received my first stringed instrument, a well-worn ukulele given to me by my grandfather. Later, I got pretty good at “Swanee River,” but my new friends didn’t seem impressed.
Since we’ve decided to talk about me, let’s fast-forward two years to the other birthday I remember, my 12th. It was significant for the gift I received from my mother, a new Gibson LG2 guitar. Sunburst. It looked like the one on my friend’s Elvis album, and I was glad to put away the ukulele. With this shiny new beauty, I was going to be rich and famous, likely overnight.
In reality, my musical zenith occurred in ninth grade. I won a school talent contest playing “Malagueña” on my Gibson. Since the performance wasn’t rock ‘n’ roll, I think I won only because the teachers and parents — the uncool and unhip in the audience — clapped for me instead of the clumsy baton twirler or the kid who played “Goodnight, Irene” on his rented tuba. The school’s talent pool was not very deep at the time.
Upon my next birthday, I’ll officially be an octogenarian. Holy crap! It seems like half my lifetime just went by in the time it took me to write this flapdoodle. But in taking stock now, I must have done okay. I have a tight, comfortable home and two happy, successful adult boys who gave me grandchildren who, when each visit is over, considerately return home with their parents. I have a wonderful wife who knows me better than I know myself, or so she says, which is pretty much the same thing. I have felt the pride and joy of creating a large, successful business, and I’ve felt the soul-crushing despair of a failure. I know the unconditional love of a good dog and the peace and joy that comes from my faith in the Lord. Finally, I have just enough true friends who would help me hide a body. A couple of them might need some notice and some starter Metamucil, but a man’s true friend and brother will always be there when needed, just as I would be for them.
Of course, they’d be more useful if we weren’t all the same age.
